Dimming of the Day

that, while the County side battled on to the end of their programme, both the club and village game came to a complete halt after the ’normal’ Bank Holiday. No games at all were played in the next ten days. This was at a time when jingoistic hysteria had yet to dominate the letters column and there was virtually no comment at all in the press at this ‘downing of tools’. A note in the Eastern Daily Press of 5 August commented matter- of-factly, HOLKHAM CRICKET WEEK ABANDONED. Owing to the seriousness of the international situation, the remainder of the matches in the Holkham Cricket Week have been abandoned, and a large bazaar and garden fete, which should have been held in the pleasure grounds in the park in aid of the new Church Rooms at Wells on Thursday has also been postponed. We understand that Oxford Emeriti are abandoning their Norfolk tour. Other clubs whose visits to Norfolk were cancelled included Merion and the Harlequins. Just two days later another report revealed that sports other than cricket had postponed or cancelled some events: yachting, bowls, lawn tennis, athletics and the following of otter hounds were all listed as being affected. Rather puzzling was the note that there were two remaining matches to be contested in the Earl of Leicester Shield (Warnham had yet to play their return matches with Holkham and the Burnhams) and that ‘the outstanding fixtures will be played after harvest’: either the sub-editor was a hopeless optimist who thought that the Kaiser would be seen off in days rather than years or it was an item of ‘old news’, written when war was still only a possibility and only printed when it was out of date. Turning north to Harrogate, the start of the local cricket for the 1914 season was reported in the Advertiser in the edition of 2 May, presumably then as now the Friday publication date. The games in the paper that week appeared to be friendlies. The Yorkshire Council and Nidderdale League and ‘ordinary’ games began the following week on the basis that their games were first reported on 9 May and the season’s fixtures were also published that week. There are weekly match reports, which appear to comprise full scorecards only, from then until they ended on 29 August. G.L.Greaves 40 states that the cricket finished on 18 August. Presumably reported on 22 August, and the final week may not have included a Harrogate CC game. In Bedfordshire, it was reported at Luton Cricket Club’s AGM that after the outbreak of war ‘only a few of the remaining matches were played.’ The AGM (in December) was adjourned in the hope that things might look brighter a few months on. The secretary thought that several clubs had already given up hope for next year, including Bedford, Dunstable and Hitchin. Cricket was not, of course, the only English village tradition to suffer: many Morris dancing sides were devastated – four of the EFDSS demonstration 40 G.L.Greaves, Over the Summers Again , a history of Harrogate CC Recreational Cricket 112